


Dancing to the Rhythm of a Different Drum

by PlaneJane



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 17:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17871599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaneJane/pseuds/PlaneJane
Summary: Klaus escapes from one terror, and finds himself in another: the A Shau Valley, Vietnam, 1968."They kissed at midnight, breath heavy with liquor, the first brush of Dave’s lips making Klaus weak at the knees. Giddy at the gentle way Dave took his face in his hands, like Klaus was something precious."My Klaus and Dave backstory, because the show didn't give me enough.





	Dancing to the Rhythm of a Different Drum

Returning from the front, shaking and sick to his stomach, Klaus reached under the cot for the briefcase. By some miracle, he’d held his rifle, kept his head down, and survived. This time. He didn’t rate his chances again.

How he’d been transported through time and space to _the Vietnam fucking war,_ he didn’t know. And he had no idea where or when he’d go if he tried opening the briefcase again. But anywhere other than here would do just fine, thank you very much.

Klaus had known terror worse than the whizz of bullets, and the rumble of the ground as shells exploded all around him. He’d felt fear more gut-wrenching than the searing cries of frightened boys, calling for their mamas as they writhed in the final throes. But this was a whole new horror sharpened by sobriety: In this damp, putrid hell, Klaus couldn’t tell the dead from the living.

‘What have you got there?’ a sunny voice said. A balm like the first sweet seconds of some blue pill or red pill running through Klaus’s veins.

Dave. The guy who’d shaken Klaus’s hand on the bus.

Klaus looked up from where he crouched. Blue eyes, bluer than the summer sky, stared down. Friendly, kind. No hint of the accusation Klaus had come to expect whenever anyone asked him a question.

Instinct told Klaus to say, ‘Nothing. Mind your own beeswax.’ To cast a joke out in the space between him and Mr-Apple-Pie-and-Ice-Cream like an invisible shield. Now there would be a power worth having, instead of seeing dead people at every turn.

Instead, Klaus found himself pushing the briefcase under the cot. Saying, ‘Something from home. Stupid thing.’

Dave held out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Wanna smoke?’

They sat side by side on the edge of the cot Klaus had adopted for his own. The previous owner stood at the foot of the bed, one arm missing, the side of his face painted with blood and brain and bone. He didn’t seem to object to Klaus taking his place, though he had that confused look common to the newly dead. The blood in his body was still warm. The cold, hard truth not yet solid in his veins.

Dave ran shaking fingers through his hair, his breaths harsh and heavy. The stink of his sweat was heady. Intoxicating. Klaus leaned closer, close enough that he could feel the rise and fall of Dave’s chest as he inhaled, exhaled, and slowly came back to Planet Earth. Back from Hell.

Dave didn’t move away from Klaus. He lit Klaus’s a cigarette, their filthy fingers briefly touching.

Klaus had never been anywhere so hot. The heat crawled over his skin, itching and burning like acid. He took a drag of the smoke, more for something to do with his hands than for the insipid buzz.

‘Well that was fun,’ Klaus said.

Dave patted Klaus’s knee, stood, and went to his own cot. The affection in that brief touch sweetly lingered, and that was enough to make Klaus to leave the briefcase unopened. For now.

 

Klaus rode out the stink and the humidity all the way to a week’s leave. To Saigon, where the American dollar could soothe every kind of ache—except one. But music and booze were a perfect start, and Dave was right there with Klaus. Beautiful Dave in a blue shirt to match his blue eyes.

They kissed at midnight, breath heavy with liquor, the first brush of Dave’s lips making Klaus weak at the knees. Giddy at the gentle way Dave took his face in his hands, like Klaus was something precious.

Klaus had been with a lot of men. Sometimes for lust. Sometimes for comfort. Sometimes because it drowned out the voices better than a fix. But he’d never got close to what could be called love. That would require him to be clean and sober, (and fuck that for a proverbial game of soldiers).

Yet in a Vietnamese bar in 1968, Klaus fell in love.

He and Dave rented a room in a cheap hotel. Red neon lights shone through the breaks in the shutters. Paint peeled from the walls, and a rickety bed stood on lumpy linoleum. Sleazy might describe the accommodation with some accuracy. Except Dave was there, and only Dave. Golden and strong and _real_. And that changed everything.

They tumbled onto the bed, lip-locked, fumbling at the buttons on their pants. Outside the room, voices yelled in a language Klaus didn’t understand. Inside, Dave’s lips worked in a language Klaus had only thought he knew, kissing Klaus’s collarbone, his muscular weight bearing down, pinning Klaus, making him feel safe.

Naked in the faded red light, Dave ran the backs of his fingers over Klaus’s chest, leaving goose bumps in their wake. ‘Those are some scars.’

‘Some people find me quite annoying.’ Klaus took Dave’s dick in his hand. Stroked its velvety length. ‘I tend to rub them up the wrong way.’

‘Not me,’ Dave said, voice raspy.

 

In the smallest hours, Klaus harbored a secret fantasy that he’d never go back to 2019. He and Dave would go to San Francisco after they left Vietnam. After all, who would miss him? No one had come when he was tied to a chair in a motel room, broken, bleeding. Not one of his most invaluable and gifted siblings. They probably hadn’t even noticed he’d gone.

A breath away, Dave nuzzled his face into Klaus’s curls, bit the top of his ear. Came to rest his hand on Klaus’s stomach, fluttering with butterflies. ‘What’s on your mind, soldier?’

 _The end of the world. The end of us._ Which amounted to much the same thing.

Klaus rubbed his eyes, and gazed at the profile of Dave’s handsome face. The darkness held no strangers tonight. No riven faces filled with questions. Only Klaus and Dave were here, and Dave made Klaus brave, stupid, dizzy. ‘Imagine what it would be like if we could marry.’

Dave laughed. ‘Man, you say some weird things.’

‘I know. It’s all the drugs I take.’

‘You’re not high now.’

‘Oh, I am. High as a kite.’

Dave marched his fingers over Klaus’s skin, along the sharp line of his pelvis, and _oh_. They kissed and rubbed against each other again, slick with sweat, chasing another climax.

‘There’s something about you, Klaus,’ Dave said after. ‘You’re something special.’

_Special? I talk to dead people._

 Klaus shuddered, as if someone had walked over his grave. He’d never rated his kind of special, but when Dave said it, it took on an entirely different meaning. Klaus hadn’t known clarity since he was thirteen years old. He was clear on this: he loved Dave, loved him more than he loved life itself.

Maybe he would die for this man.

 

A few days later, at the base, a song came on the radio. Klaus recognised it at once. Started swaying his hips, singing, ‘All we need is a drummer…’  

Dave laid back on his cot, his big arms folded behind his head. ‘You know this?’

‘Of course. It’s a classic.’

When it finished the deejay announced over the airways, ‘That was Sly and the Family Stone with “Dance to the Music”. Expect to hear it a lot, because I’m telling you it’s gonna be a hit.’

Klaus winced. He had to be careful. Which is why the next moment he was twirling around the room, until he bumped into Chad. Or was it Brad? And asked him where he got his tattoos.

No one said anything when Dave held Klaus’s hand as he moaned and cried with the pain of the needle. Klaus had withstood far worse, and enjoyed it, but he liked Dave holding his hand more. For the first time, he didn’t feel alone.

 

The scabs and the itch on Klaus’s upper arm were a distant memory, a ghost, on that night Nixon’s boys intercepted the Viet Cong’s supply lines with shells and gunfire. The night that Klaus wriggled down into the dirt, and laughed at the madness of it all—that he should find such exalted happiness in this dreadful place.  

 

Then it was gone. Dave was gone.

 

Klaus took the briefcase, and fled. Returned to 2019 as if he’d never left. Destroyed the briefcase that Dave had only asked Klaus about the once, and never again.

Sat in the tub in the place he hatefully called home, scrubbing his left arm, as if he could scrub away the ink that was embedded in his skin, Klaus wept. His body ached with grief.  

The tattoo might be the proof his siblings needed to believe Klaus when he told them where he’d been. But Klaus didn’t need the tattoo. Not anymore. Not when he put his hand on his chest. Felt a hollow beat, and the part of himself that was lost forever in the soil of the A Shau valley. Dancing to the rhythm of a different drum.

 

 


End file.
